Comments on: do androids dream of electric test papers? http://www.livesofteachers.com/2009/10/02/do-androids-dream-of-electric-test-papers/ teaching and learning languages Thu, 06 Jun 2013 07:41:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Johanna Stirling http://www.livesofteachers.com/2009/10/02/do-androids-dream-of-electric-test-papers/comment-page-1/#comment-906 Johanna Stirling Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:28:39 +0000 http://www.livesofteachers.com/?p=70#comment-906 You are SO right! Most testing is inadequate and unrealistic and yet it seems to dictate the the whole syllabus. I mean, exam courses, what are they about? You do an IELTS course to show that your English is good enough to get into an English-speaking university and you spend ages learning to describe a graph because that is an exam class. But I can’t remember ever having to describe a graph at university. And there’s so much other language and so many other skills that areneeded at university, but if it’s not in the exam, students don’t want to do it. I say ban exam courses. Exam tasks should reflect learning tasks, not the other way round.

]]> By: darren http://www.livesofteachers.com/2009/10/02/do-androids-dream-of-electric-test-papers/comment-page-1/#comment-60 darren Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:55:38 +0000 http://www.livesofteachers.com/?p=70#comment-60 Thanks Adam… I look forward to your post on the topic. I’m no expert in assessment, but I know that I would rather hand some of it over to robots!

]]> By: Adam http://www.livesofteachers.com/2009/10/02/do-androids-dream-of-electric-test-papers/comment-page-1/#comment-59 Adam Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:15:03 +0000 http://www.livesofteachers.com/?p=70#comment-59 Great article and a fine blog. I recently attended a conference at which the issue of testing spoken English electronically was raised. What was shown was both amazing and a little frightening, in terms of what can be achieved and also what can’t.

I’ll be writing it up over on my blog soon.

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